Now where did I put that bamboo…?

I’ve reading a great deal in the past few months about all of the new Nexus phones that have been coming out recently, reviews by people who have used iPhones and tried to switch but failed, reviews by people who are avid Android users who love them, and most people who are somewhere in between. I’ve heard arguments as to why certain operating systems have more future, certain phones are objectively better, and really just stand somewhere in the middle, looking at all of this with a little bit of a quizzical look on my face. I’m not trying to take sides here, but I believe that Apple’s position in this market is much better because of one main reason: NFC.

While it’s true that Google’s Nexus phones have had NFC built-in for some time, it has been clear that the feature has been little more than a bullet point in a presentation in order to build some buzz and give Android pundits something to hold over Apple’s head. I thought the inclusion of NFC in the first round of Nexus phones to be half-baked, mostly because I looked around at the places I visited every single day and saw literally nothing that used NFC in a way that was available for public interaction. The only usage for NFC that I’ve seen implemented anywhere was in the TouchPad. We all know how that went.

If users wave a NFC-equipped iPhone at a NFC Mac (they need to be in close proximity to interact), the Mac will load all their applications, settings and data. It will be as though they are sitting at their own machine at home or work. When the user leaves, and the NFC-equipped iPhone is out of range, the host machine returns to its previous state.

This is huge, and with Bluetooth coming back in a big (or perhaps little, as in low-power) way, this may be even more effective.

“The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, TransferJet etc – and that’s what I imagine would be happening here,” she said.

The above coming from Analyst Sarah Clark of SJB Research.

This idea still has so much potential. As Steve Jobs said when he unveiled iCloud, Apple is demoting the computer to just another device, one that accesses your data in its servers in North Carolina somewhere. With the computer being just a gateway to your computing state anywhere, any device can also theoretically access this saved state and allow the user to resume their previous session wherever they are.

Let’s also look at another piece to the puzzle: Apple TV. We don’t know what Apple is planning for this theoretical Apple TV later this year, but let’s take a look at the Apple TV in its current incarnation, the tiny little black box that, quite frankly, is a little Wünderdevice.

For starters, you can now do this. I think that’s a pretty big deal. So the Apple TV, in its current state, can run iOS apps. It can access iCloud. It can play music and movies, and also allows a compatible device to mirror its display through a Wi-Fi connection. Let’s talk about that for a moment, as well.

If you haven’t already, check out Gameloft’s Modern Combat 3. It’s basically a Modern Warfare clone, but it has one killer feature: the ability to mirror the game on an Apple TV, which turns the iOS device you’re holding into a controller and puts the game on the big screen. I tried this on my iPad and was amazed with the results. This is truly something that game developers need to be looking at, but it’s also something that regular developers need to be looking at, as well. Think about it–if a device that is mirroring its display output to an Apple TV can display different content on the device than on the TV, a word processing app could essentially turn the tablet into a wireless keyboard, while the main workspace is displayed on the TV. The iPad or iPhone (or both!) could display a suite of controls or “function” keys, or function as pointing devices, or really anything that you can think of. The idea of a “technology appliance” holds even more water here, since these devices can be used synergistically to create an effect that one device on its own is technically capable of, but is better when spread out among several devices. Look at Keynote, for instance. With an iPad and iPhone, a person can run an entire professional presentation with no bulky equipment and a minimum of technical prowess.

In the context of the aforementioned connection to an Apple TV, this capability becomes even more important, since it allows the TV to function like a traditional “desktop”, but without the bulk of wiring, an extra device to draw power, and connections to set up. NFC handles everything, and the bulk of the transfer can then take place over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or some other protocol that is standard in Apple devices.

And this, my friends, is why Apple is positioned so much more powerfully in this market than any Android device manufacturer. While other manufacturers will essentially be playing catch up with all of this anyway, they will also have to contend with consumers who will be presented with each manufacturer’s take on this idea. Where Samsung may offer one type of connectivity, Asus may not, since it doesn’t have a TV of its own, but LG might. The consumer will stand in front of his TV and scratch his head wondering why his Motorola Xoom isn’t connecting to his Samsung TV, while his neighbor with an iPad and Apple TV is able to transition from room to room in his house without missing a beat.

The aftermath of this whole shebang would be the equivalent of a Destruction Derby, with all of these companies vying for the consumer dollar, blowing themselves to bits and waging a war of attrition while Apple’s devices still lead the way due to their simplicity and interoperability. The next thing that will happen is that these other manufacturers will start listing even more specs on their TVs, things like gigs of ram, processor speeds, and core counts. The consumer will look at all this and once again scratch his or her head in confusion. The Apple TV will say something like “Best-in-Class Picture Quality, Siri, and [catchy Apple-fied name for NFC connections]. Say Hello to Apple TV.”

It’ll sell like gangbusters, and we’re all going to want one. Of course we will, it’s going to represent the future of computing. Can we even call it that anymore? No, not really, it doesn’t feel right, and in this one (admittedly long-shot) future, “computing” isn’t a thing. You just pick what you want or need to do, and you use well-designed, simple hardware to do it.

The rumors of an Apple-branded HDTV have been around for a long time (although perhaps not as long as the iconic iPhone). For many reasons and for many years, this didn’t make sense. Having an Apple-branded phone was ludicrous since so many other companies controlled the market in terms of handset design, technology, carrier availability, etc. Apple had no leverage; they were just getting their feet under them after recovering from an almost-inevitable downfall, and they weren’t seen as competitive in the marketplace due to the highly exclusive nature of their products. Then they started designing their own hardware, coupled it with some amazing software, and all that changed.

One of the big announcements that came out of the HP Think Beyond event was that webOS will be shipping on every PC, laptop, and some printers that they sell by the end of this year. We have pondered what that will do to the scale of webOS and how HP would implement it.

To be honest, I don’t know how this is going to play out, but it looks like these companies want to get their OS into everything in your home. I think the idea here is to have a network of appliances, devices, and screens that are discoverable and OS-aware, meaning that they can sniff out other devices/appliances on the network and interface with them. A person might be able to control his or her washing machine with a phone, or monitor the state of the vegetables in the refrigerator by glancing at a widget in the dock of a tablet, or activate a Roomba to clean the floors while he or she is away. The more devices run your flavor of OS, the more is possible on the network. Naturally, this might also lead to Skynet, but whatever.

Cutting the cord is now becoming a reality. Netflix is producing a TV show, YouTube is going live, and what do you want to bet that Hulu follows suit within the next two months? This trend is not going away, and the corporate maniacs who think that they can control how and when people get access to the media they want to watch or listen to are wrong.

They know it, they can’t fight it, but they will. In the process, they’ll cause damage to the infrastructure that is actually supporting them right now because of their greed. They don’t want to actually provide interesting things for people to watch or read, they just want to wrap it in an iron cage so people have to pay through the nose to get it, just like the diamond industry.